The latter are the more discouraging. In one, I met a fellow who ten years ago had been the most prominent undergraduate at New Haven. He apologized for offering no salary and thought the law "laborer worthy of his hire." The work he could offer was of uncertain character; often there might not be much of anything to do. An hour or two each day must be devoted to keeping the office record; work which, though wearying, might be excellent instruction; then, there were errands to the clerks and courts.

Some one has suggested that it is hard to get up the ladder, because of old fellows near the top who block the way coming down. There are many lawyers in New York who give not more than half the six hours daily which Sir William Jones advises for the law. Pride and the bitterness of leaving so much legal wisdom and cunning, make them lag after their force is spent. One of our great legal writers, at seventyfive and blind, learned, as I know, all the French irregular verbs because he came upon one which confused him. Judge D-—, long past the good Book's three score and ten, as much the law on his subject as a text writer can be in a common law country, has an office somewhat removed from the furious rush of the main streets. It is fitted with the dingiest of furnishings—a setting in which one would picture Sergeant Buzfuz. This tenant, however, has better work than. the defense of unfortunate Pickwicks; some of the most powerful corporations in the country would refuse an instrument on the strength of his imprimatur.

"I can't learn that wretched code," said one of these old gentlemen. "To try, is a prostitution of the human intellect."

His son had taken me into the room where the learned counsel was occupied with the signing of checks his secretary placed before him, and with having his shoes polished at the same moment-the time-saving habit

still a part of him, though needless now as a horse's fifth toe.

"Father, this is Mr. Murray 'and—”

"I don't give a damn if it is," he burst out with the peevishness of an old man. "At least," he went on more mildly, with a charming smile, "until I've finished this business." Then to his secretary, in reference to his writing, "Pretty shaky, today, ain't it?"

I supposed he had forgotten my presence, but in a moment he whirled about and astonished me by telling my home city and the minutiae of my college and law school courses. Here was the nearest approach to the kindergarten for law students, the existence of which, in New York, Bramwell had denied. It is his greatest pleasure to have fellows from the Harvard Law School consult him about an office. As a matter of fact, he has placed many of the now prominent attorneys in New York; even Bramwell and his brilliant colleague are "his boys." And the firm which bears and will bear his name is hardly worse than the best in New York. (This custom of keeping an old firm name, by the way, led a student on one occasion to ask to see a partner who had been dead some fifteen years.)

If you chance to look through the Supreme Court reports of the past forty years,. and into the reported cases in State courts of highest resort, you will find one name constantly recurring in the list of counsel. Its owner is one of say three men, of whom you could say none is leader of the New York trial bar-because of the others. The great barrister must have won judges and juries entirely by his remarkable intellect; he has used the cross-bow, argument, in the famous comparison of Lord Bacon, and not the long bow of persuasion, which depends on the man; for his manner is cold and austere. A smile that should have been charming is hardened by cynicism, and the great advocate speaks with indifference and sometimes. with bitterness.

"What do you want," he said, "fame or money?"

I expressed a desire for a judicious combination of the two; in fact I supposed one a concomitant of the other.

"No, there are lawyers who have made single fees of a million without going into court, and there are attorneys who appear every day in court and in the public prints— but not in the banks.

"Don't go into a large office either. If you come in here you will probably never get to see me about your work and you will certainly not argue any of my cases or even motions. People want me; they don't pay to have someone else. Besides everyone starts in this office as a student and grows to be a clerk." (The difference between these stages of advancement is a salary.)

"What I wish to know is, can a man work his way up into the firm?"

"Well, a man once got to be managing clerk here in three months-and then quit with nervous prostration. But I don't mean to answer your question that way, Alderson," he shouted. "Alderson," he said when his young partner appeared, "this is Mr. Murray, who wishes to run things as soon as possible in our office. I called for you as the best answer to his question whether a man can work into a firm if he deserves to get there."

In looking into so many offices I was following the usual student method of making a choice. In some, division of labor is so planned that you may be given one sort of work and kept at that. A classmate of mine spent his summer vacation with the Federal Reporters, abstracting every case in them relating to Admiralty; this, because his employer hoped to find an authority, although none appeared in the indices. course, then, there is no fixity of term for office positions. If a man sees himself sinking into a rut, he pulls out.

Of

The annual flood of students has not swept

away from some few lawyers their interest and consideration. Three men, all at the top of their profession, I met with no other introduction than my card. Two of them offered me openings, and the third, entirely of his own volition, tried to help me with the men at his club. But altogether it was a disheartening search. There is little professional spirit or pride in New York; the place is too big for that. A student will generally get advice, but no encouragement; and pay, after the plunge, if any at all, such as East side office boys or stenographers would sneer at. In many offices earning with some frequency fees of one hundred thousand dollars, the struggling younger brother will get no pay for half a year, and then from five to ten dollars a week. To put on a brief the name of the man who drew it, is quixotic. In one of the most important cases ever decided in New York, the clerk whose suggestion moved the Appellate Division, received not a tittle of recognition or praise for his brilliant thought.

The whole practice of the law is warped, too, by the brutal mass of business. The successful lawyer detests trial work, partly because affairs of great moment cannot wait two years to get into court, and then be bandied about for possibly ten more; partly also, because there is no telling which way a judge or jury will move. They have certain fixed ideas and habits of thought that one must accept, and which no argument can overcome. Frequently a judge's opinion is written for him by the successful litigant; otherwise, like as not, by the judge's secretary. Juries disagree outrageously where corporations are defendants; clerks of courts and sheriffs often own real estate that three times their salary could not have bought. No one has time or inclination to disbar a "shyster," and the practice of the law, losing the semblance of a profession, is being distorted into the appearance of a very sordid and money-worshipping business.

V.

'HE trial and conviction of Daniel Dam

TH

maree in 1700 (15 St. Tr. 522) is one of the conspicuous landmarks in the development of the pernicious doctrine of constructive treason. During Sacheverell's trial his motley following had become riotous in his support, and among other acts of violence, a mob had proceeded to pull down meeting houses of the Dissenters, crying, "Down with the Presbyterians." Dammaree, a waterman, had been one of the leaders of this mob, and he was forthwith tried and convicted of high treason in levying war against the queen. Lord Chief Justice Parker's views will appear from the following passage in his summing-up:

"There is a vast difference between a man's going to remove an annoyance to himself, and going to remove a public nuisance, as in the case of the bawdy-houses, and the general intention to pull them down all is treason; for if those that were concerned for them would defend them, and the others would pul! them down, there would be a war immediately. . . . A bawdy-house is a nuisance, and may be punished as such; and if it be a particular prejudice to any one, if he himself should go in an unlawful manner to redress that prejudice, it might be only a riot; but if he will set up to pull them all down in general, he has taken the queen's right out of her hand; he has made. it a general thing, and when they are once up they may call every man's house a bawdy-house; and this is a general thing; it affects the whole nation." Since, therefore, this mob proceeded with the avowed intention of demolishing all dissenting meeting-houses, as far as they were able, those

who participated in its acts were guilty of treason. By such artificial reasoning, ignoring all consideration of treasonable intent, was the life of the subject jeopardized in the first decade of the eighteenth century. This construction remained unquestioned until the trial of Lord Gordon in 1778.

In 1719 Matthews was tried and convicted for treason under the provision of the statute defining the offense of asserting the right of the Pretender (15 St. Tr. 323). Matthews was the printer of such a treasonable libel. It is believed that he was the last person executed for treason of this kind.

The trials of the leaders of the rebellion of 1715 (15 St. Tr.), and of Layer and his fellow Jacobite conspirators in 1722 (16 St. Tr. 94), present no unusual features.

Nor was there anything remarkable, in a legal sense, in the trials of the leaders of the rebellion of 1745 (18 St. Tr. 530). From the noble and courtly Kilmarnock and Balmerino to the infamous Lovat they were undeniably guilty of treason, and, together with seventy-four companions in arms, they paid the penalty of death. The spectacle of the notorious Lord Lovat, after a long life of debauchery and crime, repeating with his dying lips the famous line of Horace, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," was in keeping with his truly remarkable career.

During this period the practice of impeachment practically succumbed to its own excesses. It has ever been the weapon of party warfare, and no more disgraceful exhibition of party spirit has ever been given than the attempt by a Tory House of Commons, in 1701, to impeach the Whig peers, Somers, Portland and others, for high treas